Saturday, 19 November 2016

THE DELHI SMOG--FROM CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHANDNI CHOKE

Delhi has been choking on its arrogance and
indifference for the better part of this month and on the 6th of
November pollution levels jumped off the 1000 point AQI scale, after it reached
999 at Anand Vihar ( where I live !). I am delighted . What Delhi-ites are now
getting are the wages of their own sins, and if the govt. is pressing the panic
button its because of its own mutton headed policies. I am, in a perverse way,
happy that matters have reached a crisis point because in our country nothing
ever gets done until the problem assumes crisis proportions. The Lokpal Bill
was conceived only when Anna Hazare et al fasted in Delhi for days on end, the
laws on violence against women were passed only when a massive people’s
movement brought Delhi to a stand still, and OROP was granted only when the
ex-servicemen’s agitation started assuming dangerous proportions.

Delhi has
been the most polluted capital city in the world for quite some time but no one
was bothered in their focused worship of Mammon. Garbage is dumped outside Rs.
50 crore houses, a car is a must for even going to the bathroom, every fifth
house is being demolished to build more flats ( raising prodigious volumes of
dust), green areas are concretised to provide parking for more cars. Traders
will not allow pedestrianisation of markets, residents will insist on their
right to burst millions of fire crackers,
devotees will proclaim THEIR right to choke the Yamuna with all kinds of
muck ( with ample support from the likes of Sri Sri Ravishankar), and everyone
will gang up against the Odd-Even scheme. Assorted environmental experts make a
good living criticising every positive move at doing something. Politicians do
little except blame each other, generating even more hot air and adding to the
ambient temperature. Living in their air conditioned cocoons Delhi-ites have
taken the natural environment for granted for far too long and their
self-created nemesis is now catching up with them

As for the
NDA govt. at the centre this
metropolitan gas chamber is a symbol of its experiment of Make in India at all
costs. I have not seen a dispensation which is so indifferent and destructive
of the environment as the present one. For all its faults ( and there were
many) the UPA and earlier Congress govts. did respect the environment and
created a regulatory framework to protect it, under the umbrella of three
cardinal laws- The Forest Conservation Act, The Wildlife Protection Act and the
Forests Rights Act. It gave teeth to the Ministry of Environment and Forests
and established the National Green Tribunal.

Regrettably,
the NDA govt. has spared no effort to dismantle this protective framework, in
the mistaken belief that this will hasten Make in India and ratchet up the GDP
figures . In the process 30% of the proposed ESZ ( Environmentally Sensitive
Zone) of the Western Ghats has been thrown open for mining and builders,
railway lines and national highways are being bulldozed through national parks
and tiger reserves, rivers are being diverted without adequate EIAs, large
swathes of forest lands are being diverted for industry, rights of tribals and
forest dwellers are being trampled underfoot, industrial projects are being
permitted even in the buffer zones of protected areas, hydel projects in the
fragile Himalayas are being sanctioned with gay abandon, and efforts are even
being made to de-fang the NGT. And all this while 75% of our rivers are
polluted, the genuine green cover is declining at an alarming rate, more and
more species are being pushed towards extinction and 300,000 children die each
year from air pollution.

There have
been enough warnings- the landslides in Kedarnath, the floods in Srinagar and
Chennai, the frothing lakes in Bengaluru, the rising temperatures all over the
country, the two year drought in 2014 and 2015. The Delhi smog is the latest,
and is just one manifestation of the environmental neglect taking place at a
nation-wide level.

But neither
the citizens nor the governments will read the writing on the wall. The former
refuse to change their life styles geared exclusively towards convenience,
consumption, pleasure and money making. The latter cannot look beyond GDP, FDI and WPI. The
Union Environment Minister has passed the buck to the states, the CM and LG of
Delhi are holding parallel meetings spouting competitive clichés and
platitudes, all of which we have heard before. A Delhi Minister has created an
Avaz petition seeking suggestions from the public ! The solutions have been
there all the time, if only the govt. would muster the will to implement them:

· * Ban ALL firecrackers permanently (
not just for marriages, as the LG has done). The right to life supersedes the
right to practice distorted religious rituals.

· * Shut down the Badarpur Power Station
permanently ( not just for ten days). We cannot have a coal guzzler of ancient
vintage in the middle of a city where 30000 people are expected to die of
respiratory disease this winter alone.

· * Ban demolition of ALL residential
buildings for three years ( except on safety considerations). Their rampant,
F.A.R. driven reconstruction is a prime cause of dust pollution, generation of
vast quantities of rubble and
underground water depletion.

· * Ban ALL construction ( including
public projects) for two days in a week through the winter months.

There is
much more to be done ( including a review of the anti environmental policies of
the central govt.) but let us at least begin with these six . This can be a
template for other metros too.

The Delhi smog is indicative of a blind
spot in the govt’s priorities. It is high time all development projects are
sifted through the filter of their impact on the natural environment and proper
cost-benefit analyses conducted. We cannot blindly pursue unmitigated economic
agendas with no thought given to their impact on the natural order. After all,
we still have to live on this planet and cannot outlive its destruction for
long, not even with all the technology and monetary resources at our disposal.
Milton Friedman put it very well when he said this about the kind of world we
are building:

“ What if it
meets all the criteria of economic success except one: you cannot live there
?!”

1 comment:

Further, to the tocsin rung in this article on the portending health crises arising out of havoc being played with the air environment, there is enough reason to be alarmed on another set of environmental crises looming large in preparation for the elections due for many state assemblies in 2017 CA. Forget about any political party paying even a lip service to the cause of environment in their election manifesto, steps to seriously undermine the environmental are already afoot. Story remains the same in all the states going to elections in 2017 i.e. Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal, UP, Gujarat, Manipur and Goa. While mining lobby would be doing its best in Goa to extract few more tonnage from the womb of the earth, in Gujarat, Punjab and UP the industries and sugar mills would do their utmost to obtain licenses for environmentally degrading plants and units. Though little is known about activities in Manipur yet one comes across rampant digging of hill side in Himachal and Uttarakhand in the name of road connectivity for election harvest with large scale destruction of flora (and concomitant annihilation of ecosystem and associated fauna) in the country side. Political desperateness can be gauged by the recent (Dec. 2016) assault on DFO Bilaspur in HP who tried to stop one such attempt. More and more such instances will come to light as the date for declaration of elections and imposition of model code of conduct nears. In the ensuing din and rush for facing the elections, no one is seeing the larger picture. In addition to current crisis of potable water, citizens of this country must ready themselves to brace shortage of oxygen as well that is sure to follow by the end of year 2017 unless our neighboring countries keep us well supplied with. And fortunately, they have, so far, no control on such free movement of air at least.